


Stray Bullets (Prologue: Eli & Roman)

by hummingbear



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Blood, Character Death, Cliche, Crying, Death, Drama, Dystopia, Enemies, Feelings, Gay, Gore, How Do I Tag, Human, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Language, Lots of that, Love, M/M, One Shot, Pain, Panic, Post-War, Prologue, Short Story, Team, Tragedy, Trauma, Violence, War, Weapons, also i’m editing this atm so it’s probably going to change quite a bit, and i have no idea how to tag things, badly written but the prompt is great, but yeah I think that’s it for now, emotional stress, enjoy, i haven't developed the characters to the point of having last names yet, kind of, like hella cliche, like is there an instructional guide someone can link me to?, original character death, please bear with me i don't know what i'm doing ha, ruining a beautiful reunion with a stray bullet, so thank you for that Em and also you're evil :'), tags will change around a bit, when a and b think everything’s okay and then bam! a is suddenly mortally wounded and dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 13:44:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13124937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummingbear/pseuds/hummingbear
Summary: For just a few moments, he turned the world off.“I missed you,” Eli’s voice was muffled and just barely audible but it warmed him all the same. Something about the familiarity of the situation after so long, even if they were literally stood in a barren wasteland, a battleground, surround by the last few survivors of a war that felt like it would never end, just made this all the more perfect. Roman smiled against his forehead.“I’m glad you’re okay.”“Yeah,” Eli’s warm eyes smiled back at him, “me too.” They were lit up with boyish joy, and it hurt Roman, hit him like a derailed train, to see that light drain away.





	Stray Bullets (Prologue: Eli & Roman)

**Author's Note:**

> here's a song list for you to listen to on repeat while you read it, which is what i did while i wrote it:
> 
> -Fix You, Coldplay  
> -Where’s My Love, SYML  
> -Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol
> 
> (this is also to distract you from my awful writing so you’re welcome)

Roman called out hesitantly at first.  
“Eli,” His voice echoed harshly, sounding much too loud on the waves of unnatural quiet that hung in the foggy air. He flinched at how desperate he sounded. It was distant, hazy, and reminded him of that little lost puppy he’d found hidden in box on the street about a month ago, the same one that he, together with Eli, took under his wing: cold, scared, shaking, helpless in its own skin and unable to fend for itself.  
His anxious eyes searched urgently for his Eli. They said he’d been here last, so Roman knew he’d be around here somewhere, and he also knew, that as much as the others called for him amongst the mist, deceiving in that it was more like a suffocating white smoke, he wouldn’t stop looking until he found him. And he didn’t have to look for long.

The back of a tousled head of cinnamon brown hair emerged from out the alabaster blankets, followed by the familiar silhouette of the boy who’d become like family to him. Roman didn’t know when exactly he started to run. One foot in front of the other, a repetitive pattern gaining speed, shaky baby steps turning into flat out sprinting- he just knew that his legs started working on the command of his heart before his brain could even register the movement.  
He must’ve called out at some point, or maybe the boy had just sensed his presence, because Eli turned around to face Roman with widening, doe-like, chocolate brown eyes. The confusion barely lasted a moment before his face lit up. A dimple formed in his left cheek as he smiled- the one Eli thought was a flaw even though, really, Roman knew it was a gift- his eyes crinkled slightly as they folded into half-open crescents, and his light skin seemed to glow continuously brighter as he got closer. Roman felt like he was wading through setting concrete, like everything was moving too slowly and he needed it to speed up.  
As if Eli could read his mind, he started to run, too. They met in the middle, not slowing for a second even as they crashed into each other with such an impact it knocked the wind out of them. They landed together, limbs entangled, on the rough sandy ground that released a cloud of dust with the force of their fall. It had no effect on them whatsoever. Too preoccupied with the embrace, each clung on tightly to the other like a final lifeline. Roman could hear a muffled chorus of voices from behind them, relieved and thankful, among them an elated “thank God” from Tabatha. She was closest to them, looking on with proud eyes and a soft smile. For just a few moments, he turned the world off.

All of his attention was on Eli, who’s tears of happiness settled on his cheeks like the ones that settled on Roman’s own. Eli tugged Roman’s face down to press a quick kiss to his lips and buried his face in the crook of Roman’s neck where Eli’s favourite mole poked over the hem of his ragged and torn shirt collar. Laughing as Roman rolled on to his back, sat up and pulled him impossibly nearer, he stayed there, curled up and comfortable, a wide smile straining his cheek muscles. Roman never loosened his grip, not for a single second, not until they pulled each other up from the floor in order the hug stood up instead.  
“I missed you,” Eli’s voice was muffled and just barely audible but it warmed him all the same. Something about the familiarity of the situation after so long, even if they were literally stood in a barren wasteland, a battleground, surround by the last few survivors of a war that felt like it would never end, it just made this all the more perfect. Roman smiled against his forehead.  
“I’m glad you’re okay.”  
“Yeah,” Eli’s warm eyes smiled back at him, “me too.” They were lit up with boyish joy, and it hurt Roman, hit him like a derailed train, to see that light drain away.

Roman heard the shot before he saw the gun. At the sound of a bang he whipped his head to the side. The source was a smoking pistol, seeming old and battered, clearly having seen better days. The handler stood quite a way away from them with the rest of the group. It seemed as if everyone had frozen. The gunman had been a nobody, a simple passing face amidst the blurred lines of messy alliances and enemies, loyalties and betrayals, Roman couldn’t have given the face a name. He was unremarkable in the grand scheme of things, like every other passerby, and he could never have seen it coming no matter how hard he tried.  
When time seemed to start moving again, he felt the cogs beginning to spin in his head, putting the pieces together slowly but surely. He watched as the red headed Tabatha raised a shaky hand to her mouth, something running silently from the corner of one eye and making her cheek glisten, and she was the first to snap into action. While those in the group turned to the man with the gun and restrained him, Tabatha wrestling the gun from his hands, Roman looked on in a state of shock. He was paralysed. Tabatha had been crying, and his slowed mind couldn’t bear to comprehend why.

It couldn’t, until he felt a slouching weight against his chest in the familiar shape of a small human man, and a quiet whimper. Tearing his eyes away from the man with the gun, he grabbed the falling boy with strong hands and pulled him up into a standing position where he swayed slightly, weak and feeble on his feet, until he collapsed in a heap on the dusty ground. His heart stopped.  
“Eli?” Roman’s voice sounded as feeble as Eli looked. It was raw and choked and continued to get worse the more he spoke.  
“Eli!” He fell to the floor with the boy, pulling him close, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and lifting his chin so he could look into his eyes again.  
“I...” he choked out, a string of red spilling from the corner of his parted lips, and along with it shaky exhales followed by painful gasps. “It hurts.” Roman’s cheeks were damp. Eli’s dimming eyes were confused, Roman could feel the pain emanating from them.  
“I know.” He choked back tears but they spilled over anyway until he was sobbing. The boy in his arms couldn’t move. His words were whispers, sharp breaths and tender coughs, it was an image Roman’s nightmares had conjured from his most prominent fears, and now that their manifestation lay, petrified, in his lap, he wished he could wake up and let it all just be a dream- a simple passing glance into a reality that could and would never exist. A bad memory, a bad dream- but a dream nonetheless.

“Eli, you,” the syllables escaped in between short wheezes and violent sobs. “You have to listen to me, okay? Just, keep your eyes open, stay awake, for me, okay? Hold on, it’s all going to be okay, just hold on tight.”  
“I’m cold.”  
“I’ll hug you, come here.” Roman pulled him closer still, let Eli nestle his face into the crook of his neck once again. Roman tilted his head back, a strangled scream bubbling in the back of his throat but forcing it down despite his desperate need to let it out. Just when everything was okay...  
He could feel hot tears soaking the thin material of his shirt, sinking through it and on to his skin. He didn’t care. Roman rocked Eli in his arms. Back and forth, a soothing rhythm, like a favourite silent melody. It was soft and calming, repetitive and comfortable, familiar and warm, everything they’d wished for together. Roman’s words came to him like the lyrics of Eli’s lullaby.

“It’s all going to be okay. Soon, we’ll be home again, we can look after the puppy, you and I can catch up with Tabatha and Selene, or, if you want to, we can just talk, about anything, I don’t care.” Roman’s fingers coursed through Eli’s hair as he drew patterns against his skin. “How does that sound, hmm?”  
“We always end up talk about the same thing.”  
“We don’t have to.”  
“But I like it that way. We talk about flying. If we could escape the war, just fly away.”  
“We can leave after this, we can go anywhere you want.”  
Eli sniffles. He’s limp, lying across Roman’s knees with his head buried under the other’s chin. “It’s okay, I feel like I’m flying now.”  
“Open you eyes, Eli.” Roman couldn’t see the warm chocolate brown anymore, aside from a small sliver buried underneath long eyelashes. “Look at me.”  
“It’s true,” he says, eyelids fluttering with the effort of staying awake. He lies a palm over the crimson patch growing like a tumour and pooling at his side. “ I don’t know why, but I think... I think I like it.”  
“Eli,” Roman was barely audible, his voice nothing but a hoarse whisper, another quiet disturbance to the eerie silence that ate up their surroundings. Another breath of wind, another insignificance. “Please, please open your eyes. For me, please.”  
“But it’s so pretty, Roman, look at it.”  
“But it’s just black, there’s nothing there, Eli, please, look at me.”  
“It’s like I don’t weigh anything. You remember... you remember that one summer? The beach? When we just floated on top of the water staring at the sky and it almost did feel like flying? Like that, but more real. I wish you could feel this, it’s,” he coughed, straining his throat with raw words from a raw throat. “It’s amazing. I’m going to close my eyes now, is that okay? Please?”  
“No Eli,” tears streamed down his face. “It’s not okay, I know it’s so much easier to let go but you have to try and stay awake!”  
“It’s okay.” Eli’s eyes fluttered shut. “It’s all okay now, don’t worry about me, I’ll see you when I wake up anyway. Just like everyday. And then it’ll be fine. I love you, remember? I’ll tell you again when I wake up tomorrow, remember that.”  
“Eli... I-“  
“Shh.” His mouth twitched upwards at the corners in the faint remnants of a once wide smile, warm and happy and so, so wrong. It wasn’t fair. But then again, nothing was ever fair. “Go to sleep. Dream of me.”  
Roman fought to keep his eyes wide open, branding the image of rosy cheeks further into his memory, making this awful bliss last for the forever Eli deserved but would never get. His tears fell upon the surface of Eli’s cheeks as his eyes closed for the final time, a wrongfully peaceful expression on his face.  
He stared. He stared, and he cried, and he begged for him to wake up, trying to rip him from the clutches of the hazy fog of eternal sleep with desperate words and raw screams, shaky kisses from chapped lips to soft skin... the boy in his weakening arms was losing heat as he rocked him to sleep, reminding him of the gentle swaying motions of a boat at sea, rising and falling on the waves with the sureness and familiarity of breathing, that could either calm you down or call sickness to your stomach. Roman felt the burning alkalinity of bile rising in his blistered throat alongside the wrenching cries emptying themselves from his incapacitative lungs. His lungs. His alive, well, and working lungs, heaving erratically as he begged for them to have their places swapped.

People surrounded him. Hands reached for Eli’s own unnaturally cold palms, which were wrapped loosely around Roman’s shoulders in deathly silent protest. Roman screamed and clutched even more tightly to the lifeless body in his hands. He wasn’t dead, he was going to wake up, and they couldn’t take him away because Roman had to be there to see his living eyes again when he eventually did.  
He would wake up. One of them had to, either Eli from his slumber or Roman from his nightmare. It wasn’t real, and that was okay. It just couldn’t happen, it wouldn’t, it wasn’t fair. Roman screamed.  
The wretched sound tore his vocal chords and burned his throat, but he didn’t care. Where careless fingers reached greedily for his resting Eli, Roman gripped him harder. Cradling him like a baby. He held him tight and refused to let him go.

**Author's Note:**

> so
> 
> i want to make people to cry reading this though unfortunately i don't actually think my writing has the capability to do that but feel free to prove me wrong because that's my unrealistic goal ;3


End file.
